When the upcoming age of observatories arises, the Cornell University astronomers plan to use them to track any distant long-dead exoplanets and fingerprints of alien life. They won’t scan any exoplanets, but only those that are orbiting dead stars. When is the best moment to do such a thing?
According to astronomers, when a rocky, Earth-similar exoplanet moves in front of the white dwarf that it orbits, that’s the right time to look after any signs of life. The team of astronomers from the Cornell University already published their study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
They hope to provide a reference and support other astronomers’ work and researches. If all the measurements turn out to be accurate, they will get a one in a million chance to find alien life signs.
A Chance for Finding Alien Life
That possible rocky, Earth-similar exoplanet would have survived the destruction of its host star. White dwarves are known as the last cores of stars that consume all their energy and then collapsed. So, anything alive on those planets wouldn’t survive such a terrible event, but new life could have theoretically developed quickly.
If scientists discover fingerprints of life on worlds orbiting under the energy of long-dead stars, the question would be: did life lasted through all the star’s process of death or it emerged all over again? A second genesis might also get in the question, and the work of scientists would hugely expand. The possibilities would also increase, and we would be closer to other signs of alien life.
A Space Fingerprint
And this is where the Cornell University’s research kicks in. It is somehow like a catalog of what scientists might come across as they explore those long-dead exoplanets. Thea Kozakis, a grad student from the Cornell University, detailed: “If we observe a transit of that kind of planet, scientists can find out what is in its atmosphere, refer back to this paper, match it to spectral fingerprints and look for signs of [alien life].”
